Demolishing of buildings or other electrically wired structures frequently produces large quantities of used electrical wire, cable or the like. Such wire or cable is typically unsuitable for reuse but contains substantial amounts of valuable metal, such as copper for example, which can be salvaged for further usage.
Recovery of the metal content of insulated electrical wire is also practiced in the manufacture of such wire. Specific lots of newly made wire may be rejected during quality control inspection because of excessive dimensional variations, incipient breaks or other reasons. It is advantageous if the metal content of such lots is recovered for reprocessing.
Recycling of the metal content of electrical wiring requires removal or stripping of the insulation sheath from the metal core. Removal of the insulation with hand tools is a slow and tedious operation and may not, as a practical matter, be economically feasible.
A number of motor driven wire stripping mechanisms have heretofore been developed to enable rapid and efficient recovery of metal. Typically the insulated wire is travelled from a feed-out spool through wire positioning guides to a cutting tool which slits the insulation and then through a stripping cone which peels away the insulation. The stripped metal core is then wound onto a drum, spool or the like by a winding mechanism.
Prior powered wire strippers of the above discussed kind, typically designed for high volume production in wire manufacturing plants, have been undesirably complex, bulky and costly. Many are essentially permanent installations within a factory and cannot conveniently be moved about to temporary locations such as, for example, the site of a building which is being demolished.
Recovery of metal from insulated wire would be greatly facilitated under many circumstances by a compact and relatively inexpensive powered wire stripping and winding mechanism of less complex construction. Preferably the mechanism should be capable of processing batches of wire and stranded cable that may have widely differing diameters.
The present invention is directed to overcoming one or more of the problems discussed above.